This is not a post about what you need to do, think, or spend to make a game, nor is it a post about board games themselves. This is a post about the players in a much bigger game: the board game industry itself.

Marketing covers a wide array of activities that convince people to care about and eventually buy your game. Marketing is best understood as an ongoing process that breathes itself into everything you do as a self-publishing board game developer.

“You mean you can put your business idea on there and people will just pay for it? OMG!” Well, yeah. That is how it works when you look at it from a distance. Yet up close, this initial impression almost entirely wrong.

Success is not the endgame of Kickstarter projects. Many people think that when a project is funded, that’s it – it’s a victory. This couldn’t be farther than the truth. As many as 84% of Kickstarter projects fulfill rewards late.

Selling is one of the most nerve-wracking and technical parts of getting a small business off the ground. You must absolutely master it to achieve the financial success you desire when self-publishing a game.

In order to give you a sense of what it’s like to work on a team, I’ve reached out to the three members of Undine Studios – Ben Haskett, Sarah Reed, and Will Reed. They made Oaxaca: Crafts of a Culture.

In a business context, autopsies don’t help us diagnose death, but rather failure. It is a way of helping us learn from our mistakes and adjust our behavior accordingly. A business autopsy is when you use evidence to determine why and how a project failed.

First things first, in order to test the core engine of your game, you need something playable. It doesn’t have to be fun, challenging, or meaningful. Your game, during this very early stage of development, just needs to be an activity which can be completed by following instructions.

Rules provide directions on how to execute activities within a game. They explain, limit, and clarify. Game rules are how we regulate the mechanics of our games so that they are consistent with the messages we want to send to players. I’ve brought in Sean Fallon, the mastermind behind Rift Shifters and Paths so that you can get two viewpoints instead of just one.

Telling stories is one of the most essentially human instincts. Whether or not we mean to, we tell stories through games. It’s best to embrace storytelling no matter how thematic your game is and perfect its tone. Through art, physical components, and clever use of language, board games can transcend their parts and become rich experiences.

Telling stories is one of the most essentially human instincts. Whether or not we mean to, we tell stories through games. It’s best to embrace storytelling no matter how thematic your game is and perfect its tone. Through art, physical components, and clever use of language, board games can transcend their parts and become rich experiences.

Games are more than just what’s in the box. Games are also the marketing used to promote them – the advertising and the footwork of the game developers who made them. Games are also the Kickstarter campaign and the stores they’re kept in. Games are the community that talks about them on forums and plays them at conventions. Games become everything that people claim that they are.

The most common one is colorblindness. Other common inaccessibilities are tokens you can’t tell apart by touch, tiny text, random placement of game symbols, poor contrast, non-standard dice with special faces, paper money, and so on.

This is one of the hardest categories for a modern designer game to do well within – the more strategically and tactically interesting a game is, the harder it is for it to be delivered as a cognitively accessible experience.

People need to see people like them reflected in a cultural product before they see it as being for people like them. When under-represented groups look at a shelf of board games and see only white men staring back at them, that creates an accessibility barrier.

With a rule book, the format is often more formal and factual but I believe it can have fluidity in terms of its structure. Specific rules/information may be conveyed in bullet point and/or through specific technical paragraphs. However, there may be some storytelling to convey the reason or meaning behind a particular series rules and mechanics.

You need to choose the right materials, understand the basics of board game manufacturing, and legal and distribution requirements. Once you understand all that and agree on specs with your desired printer, you will then need to make files according to their standards. It’s a lot to take in.

Commissioning art can be one of the most daunting parts of the game development process. I’ve written about How to Find an Artist for Your Board Game, but this time, I thought you’d like hearing from an actual artist! That’s why I’ve brought in James Masino.

I will usually start my search on Deviant art in the Job forums. I feel like there are many great undiscovered artists there, and those artists definitely deserve a chance to prove themselves. I will also use another website called Artstation.

Artists are some of the most important people you will work with when you’re creating a game. Making sure they are happy and understand the needs of your project is critical to your game’s success. To help understand this subject, I’ve brought in both Sean Fallon of Smunchy Games and James Masino, who did the art for War Co. and Highways & Byways.

Since you will most likely be using offset printing to make your board game, you will have to print 1,000 copies or more. Because of the high costs of board game printing and the importance of product quality in establishing your reputation, it is absolutely necessary to find a good company.

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Marketing & Promoting Your Game

Marketing is a tricky beast. At its root, marketing is all about finding, keeping, and pleasing customers. This is simple to explain, maybe even obvious. Yet beneath the surface, you have a business function and area of study that is rife with different methods and schools of thought, many of which contradict each other.

One of the greatest forms of marketing, my personal favorite, in fact, is content marketing. The term “content marketing” gets thrown around carelessly on the Internet way too much and with little meaning attached, but the basic idea is simple. Content marketing means you market your brand or your product by sharing information with potential customers.

If you are a board game developer like me, you are simultaneously privileged and burdened to live in this current time. We’re in an unprecedented era of creativity made possible by the internet and low barriers to entry.

Marketing is a slow dance. You have to very slowly build your reputation. Twitter is great because it lets new developers draw attention to themselves with fewer barriers than ever before. But it’s still a long, slow climb from Attention to Action. You have to have a great game, a great website, a good business case, and so on. You can’t tweet yourself to the Top 100 on Board Game Geek. Trust me, I tried.

Start to Finish is a work in progress. Here is a rough list of what’s still to come!

Marketing & Promoting Your Game

How to Build up a Facebook Page as a Board Game Dev

The Art of the Newsletter

Building up an Instagram as a Board Game Dev

Getting Your Game Reviewed – The Process

Appealing to Reviewers

How to Get Noticed on Reddit without Looking Like a Doofus

The Art of the Board Game Convention

The Art of the Board Game Livestream

Creating a Great Board Game Press Release

Be My Guest: How to Get on Podcasts and Blogs

Kickstarting & Fulfilling Your Game

Spreading the Word Early

The Math of Kickstarter: Realistic Time and Money Estimates

Let’s Talk about Tax and Legal Issues: Kickstarter Isn’t all Fun and Games

Perfecting Your Kickstarter Campaign Page

Kickstarter Fulfillment: Ordering a Print Run

Kickstarter Fulfillment: Sending Products to Americans if You’re an American

Kickstarter Fulfillment: Sending Products to Other Countries if You’re an American

Kickstarter Fulfillment: Going through a Third Party

How to Have the Perfect Kickstarter Launch Day

How to Keep Kickstarter Momentum through Updates and Stretch Goals

How to Keep up with Your Kickstarter Timeline after the Campaign

How to Take Pre-Orders when the Campaign Closes

Selling Your Game

People Judge Books by Covers: Making Your Board Game Box Gorgeous so People Buy It

How to Set a Price for Your Board Game

How to Sell Your Game at Conventions

How to Keep Momentum after Your Launch

The Magic of Advertising

Other Ways to Sell Your Game

Need help on your board game?

Join my community of over 1100 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

Join my community of over 1,100 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

Buy my first game, War Co.

Join my community of over 1,100 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

Highways & Byways is now on Kickstarter. Pledge now to reserve your copy.